Fill a plastic bottle half full with sand or salt. Add letter beads and shake. Give children an answer sheet with the alphabet letters from A to Z. As they turn the bottle they can mark off the letters that they find.
*You can do the same thing with little objects.
Erasers (Megan Blevins)
Use socks as erasers for dry erase boards. You can also glue pompoms to the lid of dry erase markers and use to erase.
Hint! I used E6000 glue! Love the stuff!
Let the children pick three stickers to help prompt them to write. After writing they can add a background and details.
Hint! Did you know that if you accidentally use a Sharpie marker you can rub it away with a dry erase marker?
Clean Up (Claire Spence kindergarten teacher – shared by Jaime)
Have cleaning supplies (sweeper, dust pan, broom, etc.) at children’s eye level. At clean up time tell the children to find four problems and fix them. Children will accept the responsibility and clean up on their own.
Sensory Play (Kristy Vicars)
Place shredded paper in the sand/water table. Hide small objects like rubber animals, beads, magnetic letters, etc. in the paper. Children use tweezers or plastic spoons to remove and identify the objects.
Field Trip Book (Laura Buell)
Take pictures on field trips. Print the pictures, put them in sleeve protectors, and put them in a report folder. Children dictate or write about the pictures on sentence strips. Slide the sentence strips in the sheet protectors and the children will “love” to read about their trip.
Group Management (Peg Caines)
I have four tables of five kids each. I put a letter sticker at the same place at each table with the letters A B C D E. Call the “A group,” “B team,” “C buddies,” “D club,” etc to make groups of four.
Movement Patterns (Amy Grubb)
For transitions or to regain focus do a pattern for students to repeat. Examples:
Snap, snap, clap.
A A B
Hop, spin, stomp.
A B C
Sock It to Me (Vicki Brashears)
Buy pairs of seasonal socks on sale and hide them around the classroom. Everyone finds a sock and brings it back to the group. Take turns using descriptive words to describe your sock until the person with the matching sock recognizes it.
